KINGDOM BY THE SEA | By Amy Parker

In the past few months, I’ve heard and read a lot of commentary on the works of Nabokov and the ever-controversial Lolita. Today we’re not discussing Nabokov’s novel itself, but rather an intricate and dangerous short story called “Kingdom by the Sea,” published this fall by Amy Parker in Interfictions. Continue reading →

TOURNIQUET TUESDAYS | Tori Bond.

In “Tourniquet Tuesdays,” author Tori Bond begins by describing the drinking game of the same name (“It involved Wild Turkey and knocking someone out while blindfolded”) and uses this bizarre tradition as the starting point for what turns into a nuanced portrait of a deep-woods dive bar (Ottos’s Bar), its proprietor and patrons, and ultimately the unnamed small town it serves. The story relies on an anonymous third-person narrative voice to expand its view from the wacky barroom game to the plight of working-class, small-town communities and the ennui and confinement that often befall their residents. Continue reading →

DREAM SEQUENCE #35 | Lisa De Nikolits

This story is a cool and super trippy dream sequence that commands readers’ attention through its beautiful prose, idiosyncratic shifts and associations, and the overall confidence with which this piece is written: there is an urgency to the events described, even if the laws of cause and consequence are skewed by the story’s dream logic. Continue reading →

FAWNA MOON | Erika T. Wurth.

The following is a list of unforgivable textual crimes: plagiarism, oxford commas, semicolons (except when used ironically), triteness, cliches and received language as a substitute for original thought, interrobangs, emojis, and unintentional rhyme/alliteration. Continue reading →

THE WATER GOBLIN | Emily Koon.

“The Water Goblin,” a short story by Emily Koon recently published in Paper Darts, is a deeply felt, beautifully stylized portrait of crisis within a family undergoing a cultural transition. More than that, it is a masterful example of allegory within the context of short-form prose. Continue reading →

PSYCHOPOMP | Indrapramit Das.

But first, let’s talk about Interfictions.com, a venue for some of the most exciting, boundary-smashing works of literature being written today. I first discovered Interfictions (and its creator, the Interstitial Arts Foundation) through the two phenomenal print anthologies of the same name. Since going digital, Interfictions continues to create thought-provoking, entertaining literary works that mesh genres, text forms, and ideas in an ongoing interrogation of interstitiality (MFA buzzword #1) and the ways that this concept drives artistic innovation. Continue reading →